His hands rested on his thighs, his cock semi-erect between them. His collar, the one she’d surprised him with just that morning, was around his neck; a thick, black leather collar that fit him perfectly. She’d left it on the dresser before she left for work. Another point in his favor – he’d found it and read the instructions.

The only other things on Xander’s incredible body were the nipple piercings and the magnificent tattoos that decorated his otherwise perfect skin.

As she moved slowly across the room, she could see the word “Trust” tattooed on his side, following the rigid line of muscle that arrowed down toward his groin.

“Have you been there long?” she asked as she moved toward the bathroom.

“No, Mistress.”

She didn’t say anything more even though the fact that he’d referred to her as “Mistress” should have thrilled her immensely. Just like every other time he’d said it throughout the day, it sounded hollow, and that bothered her.

Instead, she left him kneeling while she went through the oversized bathroom to her closet. Once inside, she put her shoes back in their place and then proceeded to change clothes. Her office attire wouldn’t do for tonight. She had an image to uphold after all.

Twenty minutes later, she ventured back into the bedroom, completely dressed. On the other side of the room, lying on the top of her dresser were the clothes she’d personally picked out for him to wear to the club tonight. After retrieving the pair of leather pants, a black t-shirt which would be removed as soon as they were inside, and his black lace-up boots, she returned to where he was still kneeling on the floor.

Before she asked him to rise, she admired him some more. Hell, seeing him on his knees, doing exactly as she’d instructed was heady enough, but the idea that he might be doing it solely to please her made her burn for him.

Sub or not, Xander truly was the most immaculate male specimen she’d ever seen. Without an ounce of fat on his body, the man weighed somewhere near two-seventy-five, give or take a few pounds. At six-foot-six-inches, he was massive, and Mercedes, not being one of those slight, skinny women, appreciated every single inch of him. In comparison, she felt incredibly feminine and sometimes even fragile when his arms were around her.

 “Stand,” she instructed as she set his clothes on the bed next to where he was kneeling.

When he was upright, Mercedes moved in close, letting her body brush slightly against his nakedness. Even at five-foot-eight-inches with her five inch heels adding even more to her height, Mercedes had to look up into Xander’s eyes.

The heat she hoped to see reflected there would’ve made her body warm another degree, but that’s not what she saw. No, what she witnessed in Xander’s beautiful green eyes was a void, as though he couldn’t think or feel for himself unless she told him exactly what to do.

She wasn’t fond of that look.

Their previous conversation rang loud in her head.

“Remember that night at Kink when you volunteered to let Mistress Desiree demonstrate on you because no one else had the balls to do it, how did that make you feel?”

“Like I was in someone else’s body.”

That’s exactly what it was. He was somewhere else, but his body was there for her taking. He was doing as she wished, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Did she expect it would be?

Pushing the question out of her mind, she slid her hands, palms down, over his taut stomach, up over the thick planes of his chest and then around his neck, pulling his head down easily until her mouth met his.

“I missed you,” she whispered before pressing her lips to his. The kiss rapidly escalated, and Mercedes had to force herself to pull away from him. “Get ready, and we’ll leave in a few minutes,” she told him as she planted another short kiss on his lips.

“Yes, Mistress.”

That’s what she heard when he called her Mistress... Absolutely nothing. The word was right, but it was hollow.

Needing a moment to herself, Mercedes left the bedroom and headed to her guest bedroom where she kept her toys. She’d also stashed a few things she’d retrieved just that morning from Xander’s personal dungeon.

She wanted to add a couple of things to her bag tonight, toys she knew he had in his vast arsenal, the ones she’d eyed when they had previously visited his dungeon. Not that she needed any other toys for Xander because she’d already stocked up from her own collection, choosing exactly what she thought would make him lose his mind.

And that’s what she was going to do. She’d only been anticipating it since the day they’d made their deal. To prove to him that she wasn’t what he wanted her to be. She was a Domme.

Not wanting to waste any more time, she grabbed the items and made a beeline for the front door. It was time to do this.


Mercedes woke with a start, glancing around the room to find herself alone.

Holy crap.

Covering her eyes with her hands, she tried to calm her breaths. She was slowly going crazy, and that dream wasn’t helping.

It’d only been four days that she’d been practically glued to Xander’s side, pretty much handing herself over to him on a silver platter yet that dream continued to torment her and had since the first night she slept in his arms.

She could close her eyes and still see how incredibly handsome Xander looked with her collar around his neck. But it had been his responses in the dream that always tripped her up night after night. Every time, she expected to see something different, but it was never there. It was like he was just a shell of himself. Like his body was there, but someone else had entered the right response, the right actions, hell, the right way to breathe into his brain, and that was all he knew how to do.

Sighing, she rolled over to her side.

Was this a sign? Was her subconscious telling her that she couldn’t do this anymore? Being a sub was… shit. It was confusing is what it was.

The dream seemed surreal, sort of like a premonition. She couldn’t help but compare her own responses to Xander’s domination against the dream version of Xander and his responses to her. There were no similarities. She seemed suited for submission, while he… did not.

There was no way to deny that her body was eagerly anticipating Xander and his commands. She burned hotter and brighter than ever before when she gave herself over to him completely.

But she had a difficult time accepting her desire to submit. Especially considering what she’d been through as a child. The hell that her father had put her through every single day of her life. She didn’t want to get herself in that position ever again. Never could she allow someone else to have that sort of control over her.

It didn’t feel that way with Xander, but the fear was still close, coming to the surface with every passing minute.

“Let her go out with her friends, Phillip,” Priscilla argued while Mercedes stood just around the corner, watching her parents in their kitchen.

“I told her no,” Phillip yelled. “I don’t want her out of the house.”

“She’s sixteen. She needs to spend time with her friends.”

“She’s too stupid to have friends,” Phillip screamed and Mercedes flinched as though she’d been slapped.

Too stupid? Had her father really called her that?

Sure, he’d called her many names before – pest, tramp, pain in the ass, not to mention some much, much worse. But stupid?

She made straight A’s; she didn’t miss school, didn’t even ask to stay home when her temperature had been over one hundred, and she had been throwing up all night.

She knew better. Her father would’ve stayed home, keeping her right under his thumb, telling her to quit faking it, to grow up. And if that didn’t work, if he didn’t get the reaction he wanted, he would hit her.

Never did he spank her like she’d heard some parents did to their children when they were bad. No, he back handed her. Once he had even punched her in the stomach.

Just like he did to her mother.

And that’s what made this situation all the more surprising. Her mother was standing up for her. She was sixteen years old and for as long as she could remember, Priscilla had never stood up for her against her father. Not once.

But here Priscilla was, standing up to her father, a gleam in her once pretty gray eyes.

“Let her go out,” Priscilla said through gritted teeth, shocking Mercedes with her boldness.

“Fuck you,” Phillip argued. “She’s staying right here. Until she turns eighteen. Then she can do whatever the fuck she wants. She can go out and fuck the defensive line for her school’s pitiful excuse for a football team for all I care.”

What? Mercedes couldn’t believe her father was saying such disgusting things. She was a freaking virgin.

“You’re too hard on her,” Priscilla said, that eerie glow still in her eyes.

“And you’re a pitiful excuse for a human being,” he barked. “But I fucked you once and you fucked me for the rest of my life. So this is what you get. But don’t worry, the day she turns eighteen, neither of you will see me again.”

“I hate you!” Priscilla yelled.

“Not nearly as much as I hate you,” Phillip growled.